-
Storm troopers
By 1932, some 6 million Germans were unemployed. Many men who
were out of work joined Hitler’s private army, the storm troopers (or Brown Shirts). The German people were desperate and turned to Hitler as their last hope. -
Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany
At the end of World War I, Hitler had been a jobless soldier drifting around Germany. In 1919, he joined a struggling group called the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as the Nazi
Party. Despite its name, this party had no ties to socialism. -
Mein Kampf
His book Mein Kampf [My Struggle], Hitler set forth the basic beliefs of Nazism that became the plan of action for the Nazi Party. Nazism the German brand of fascism, was based on extreme nationalism. Hitler, who had been born in Austria, dreamed of uniting all German-speaking people in a great German empire. -
Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy
1922, Mussolini marched on Rome with thousands of his followers, the name “Black Shirts.” The police sided with the Fascists, the Italian king appointed Mussolini head of the government. Tourists marveled that Il Duce had even “made the trains run on time.” Stressed nationalism and placed the interests of the state above those of individuals. Fascists argued, power with a single strong leader and a small group of devoted party members. -
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
The watchful League of Nations had been established after WW I to prevent just such aggressive acts. In this greatest test of the League’s power, representatives were sent to Manchuria to investigate the situation. Their report condemned Japan, who in turn simply quit the League. Manchurian invasion put the militarists firmly in control of Japan’s government. -
Third Reich
In its place he established the Third Reich, or Third German Empire. According to Hitler, the Third Reich would be a “Thousand-Year Reich”—it would last for a thousand years.Once in power, Hitler quickly dismantled Germany’s democratic Weimar Republic. -
Hitler's military build- up in Germany
The failure of the League of Nations to take action against Japan did not escape the notice of Europe’s dictators. In 1933, Hitler pulled Germany out of the League. In 1935, he began a military buildup in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. -
Hitler invades the Rhineland
A military buildup in violation of the Treaty of Versailles. A year later, he sent troops into the Rhineland, a German region bordering France and Belgium that was demilitarized as a result of the Treaty of Versailles. The League did nothing to stop Hitler. -
Mussonlini's invasion of Ethiopia
Fall of 1935, tens of thousands of Italian soldiers stood ready to advance on Ethiopia. The League of Nations reacted with brave talk of “collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression.”
When the invasion began. The League’s response was an ineffective economic boycott—little more than a slap on Italy’s wrist. By May 1936, Ethiopia had fallen. -
Francisco Franco
A group of Spanish army officers led by General Francisco Franco,
rebelled against the Spanish republic.The Spanish Civil War began. The war passions not only in Spain but throughout the world. About 3,000 Americans formed the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and traveled to Spain to fight against Franco. Among the volunteers were African Americans still bitter about Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia the year before. -
Hitler's Anschluss
German troops marched into Austria unopposed. A day later, Germany announced that its Anschluss, or “union,” with Austria was complete. The United States and the rest of the world did nothing. -
Munich Agreement
In their eagerness to avoid war, Daladier and Chamberlain chose to believe him. On September 30, 1938, they signed the Munich Agreement, which turned the Sudetenland over to Germany without a single shot being fired. Chamberlain returned home and proclaimed: “My friends, there has come back from Germany peace with honor. I believe it is peace in our time.” -
Joseph Stalin's totalitarian government in the Soviet Union
Stalin had established a totalitarian government that tried to exert complete control over its citizens. In a totalitarian state, individuals have no rights, and the government suppresses all opposition. Stalin was responsible for the deaths of 8 million to 13 million people. 1937, the Soviet Union had become the world’s second-largest industrial power, surpassed in overall production only by the United States. 1928, Soviet dictator outlined the first of several “five-year plans. -
Rome- Berlin Axis
The war fake a close relationship between the German and Italian dictators, who signed a formal alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis. After a loss of almost 500,000 lives, Franco’s victory in 1939
established him as Spain’s fascist dictator. Once again a totalitarian government ruled in Europe. -
Nonaggression pact
August 23, 1939 fascist Germany and communist Russia now committed never to attack each other. Germany and the Soviet Union also signed a second, secret pact, agreeing to divide Poland between them. With the danger of a two-front war eliminated, the fate of Poland was sealed. -
Blitzkrieg
First test of Germany’s newest military strategy, the blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg made use of advances in military technology—such as fast tanks and more powerful aircraft—to take the enemy by surprise and then quickly crush all opposition with overwhelming force. -
Britain and France declare war on Germany
On September 3, two days following the terror in Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. The blitzkrieg tactics worked perfectly. Major fighting was over in 3 weeks. In the last week of fighting, the Soviet Union attacked Poland from the east, grabbing
some of its territory. The portion Germany annexed in western Poland contained almost two-thirds of Poland’s population. By the end of the month, Poland had ceased to exist—and World War II had begun. -
Phony war
The blitzkrieg had given way to what the Germans called the sitzkrieg (“sitting war”), and what some newspapers referred to as the phony war. Late in 1939, Stalin sent his Soviet army into Finland. -
Hitler's invasion Netherland
Hitler turned against the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg, which were overrun by the end of May. The phony war had ended. -
Marshal Philippe Petain
Germans would occupy the northern part of France, and a Nazi-controlled puppet government, headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain, would be set up at Vichy, in southern France. -
Hitler's invasion of Denmark and Norway
April 9, 1940, Hitler launched a surprise invasion of Denmark and Norway in order “to protect [those countries’] freedom and independence.” -
Germany and Italy's invasion of France
Italy entered the war on the side of Germany and invaded France from the south as the Germans closed in on Paris from the north. On June 22, 1940, at Compiègne, as William Shirer and the rest of the
world watched, Hitler handed French officers his terms of surrender. -
The battle of Britain
On September 15, 1940 the RAF shot down over 185 German planes; at the same time, they lost only 26 aircraft. Hitler had 2,600 planes at his disposal. On a single day August 15 approximately 2,000 German planes ranged over Britain. -
Lend - Lease Act
Roosevelt compared his plan to lending a garden hose to a neighbor whose house was on fire. He asserted that this was the only sensible thing to do to prevent the fire from spreading to your own property. Isolationists argued bitterly against the plan, but most Americans favored it, and Congress passed the Lend- Lease Act in March 1941. -
Pearl Harbor attack
The bomber was followed by more than 180 Japanese warplanes
launched from six aircraft carriers. As the first Japanese bombs found their targets, a radio operator flashed this message: “Air raid on Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill.” The Japanese had killed 2,403
Americans and wounded 1,178 more. The surprise raid had sunk or damaged 21 ships, including 8 battleships—nearly the whole U.S. Pacific fleet. More than 300 aircraft were severely damaged or destroyed. Navy suffered in all World War I. -
Manhattan Project
In 1941, the committee reported that it would take from three to five years to build an atomic bomb. Hoping to shorten that time, the OSRD set up an intensive program in 1942 to develop a bomb as quickly as possible. Because much of the early research was performed at Columbia University in Manhattan, the Manhattan Project became the code name for research work that extended across the country. -
Office of Price Administration
Roosevelt responded to this threat by creating the Office of Price Administration (OPA). The OPA fought inflation by freezing prices on most goods. Congress also raised income tax rates and extended the tax to millions of people who had never paid it before. The higher taxes reduced consumer demand on scarce goods by leaving workers with less to spend. -
Internment
"On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed an order requiring the removal of people of Japanese ancestry from California and parts of Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. In the following weeks, the army rounded up some 110,000 Japanese Americans and shipped them to ten hastily constructed remote “relocation centers,” euphemisms for prison camps." -
Battle of Atlantic
1942, the Germans sank 87 ships off the Atlantic shore. By early 1943, 140 Liberty ships were produced each month. Launchings of Allied ships began to outnumber sinkings. By mid-1943, the tide of the Battle of the Atlantic had turned. A happy Churchill reported to the House of Commons that June “was the best month [at sea] from
every point of view we have ever known in the whole 46 months of the war.” -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Germans had been fighting in the Soviet Union since June 1941. In November 1941, the bitter cold had stopped them in their tracks outside the Soviet cities of Moscow and Leningrad. When spring came, the German tanks were ready to roll. In the summer of 1942, the Germans took the offensive in the southern Soviet Union. Hitler hoped to capture Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus Mountains.
He also wanted to wipe out Stalingrad, a major industrial center on the Volga River. -
Operation Torch
Was the Anglo-American invasion of French Morocco and Algeria during the North African Campaign of World War II. It began on November 8 and concluded on November 16, 1942. -
Women's Auxiliary Army Corps
The military’s work force needs were so great that Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall pushed for the formation of a Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC). Under this bill, women volunteers would serve in noncombat positions. -
War Productions Board
The War Production Board (WPB) assumed that responsibility. The WPB decided which companies would convert from peacetime to wartime production and allocated raw materials to key industries. The WPB also organized drives to collect scrap iron, tin cans, paper, rags, and cooking fat for recycling into war goods. Across America, children scoured attics, cellars, garages, vacant lots, and back alleys, looking for useful junk. -
U.S. convoy system
The Allies responded by organizing their cargo ships into convoys. Convoys were groups of ships traveling together for mutual protection, as they had done in the First World War. The convoys were escorted across the Atlantic by destroyers equipped with sonar for detecting submarines underwater. Airplanes that used radar to spot U-boats on the ocean’s surface. With this improved tracking, the Allies were able to find and destroy German Uboats faster than the Germans could build them. -
Korematsu v. United States
1944, the Supreme Court decided, in Korematsu v. United States, that the government’s policy of evacuating Japanese Americans to camps was justified on the basis of “military necessity.” In 1965, Congress authorized the spending of $38 million for that purpose—less than a tenth of Japanese Americans’ actual losses. -
Bloody Anzio
Hitler was determined to stop the Allies in Italy rather than fight on German soil. One of the hardest battles the Allies encountered in Europe was fought less than 40 miles from Rome. This battle, “Bloody Anzio,” lasted four months—until the end of May 1944—and left about 25,000 Allied and 30,000 Axis casualties. After Anzio, German armies continued to put up strong resistance. The effort to free Italy did not succeed until 1945, when Germany itself was close to collapse. -
D- Day
Banking on a forecast for clearing skies, Eisenhower gave the go-ahead for D-Day—June 6, 1944, the first day of the invasion. Shortly after midnight, three divisions parachuted down behind German lines. They were followed in the early morning hours by thousands upon thousands of seaborne soldiers—the largest land-sea-air
operation in army history. -
The Battle of the Bulge
8 German tank divisions broke through weak American defenses along an 80-mile front. Hitler hoped that a victory would split American and British forces and break up Allied supply lines. Tanks drove 60 miles into Allied territory, creating a bulge in the lines that gave this desperate lastditch offensive its name, the Battle of the Bulge. As the Germans swept westward, they captured 120 American GIs near Malmédy. -
V- E Day
General Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of the Third Reich. On May 8, 1945, the Allies celebrated V-E Day—Victory in Europe Day. The war in Europe was finally over. -
Unconditional surrender
Roosevelt, Churchill agreed to accept only the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers. That is, enemy nations would have to accept whatever terms of peace the Allies dictated. The two leaders also discussed where to strike next. The Americans argued that the best approach to victory was to assemble a massive invasion fleet in Britain and to launch it across the English Channel, through France, and into the heart of Germany. Churchill, however, thought it would be safer to first attack Italy. -
Death of Hitler
The next day Hitler shot himself while his new wife swallowed poison. In accordance with Hitler’s orders, the two bodies were carried outside, soaked with gasoline, and burned. -
Harry S. Truman
President Roosevelt did not live to see V-E Day. On April 12, 1945, while posing for a portrait in Warm Springs, Georgia, the president had a stroke and died. That night, Vice President Harry S. Truman
became the nation’s 33rd president.